Should the United States sell attack aircraft to Nigeria? The following letter, signed by an unusual cross-section of advocacy organizations, was sent to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

We the undersigned organizations are writing to convey our concerns regarding reports that the Trump administration is moving forward with plans to sell A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft, with mounted machine guns and related part and logistical support to the government of Nigeria. We believe that without concrete evidence that the Nigerian government is taking action to protect human rights and enforce accountability, this transfer is a mistake.

In June of 2016 we expressed concerns over the same proposed sale to President Obama, citing the lack of adequate safeguards and accountability mechanisms to ensure that the Tucano aircraft would be used consistently with international human rights and humanitarian law by the Nigerian military. We reiterate those concerns now and ask that you take steps to limit the risks that equipment supplied by the US will be used to commit violations of human rights and humanitarian law.

Our message to the Obama administration was that the US should insist on securing robust, end use monitoring commitments, safeguards against further human rights violations, and other credible and measurable progress on accountability within the Nigerian security forces. These recommendations were offered with the aim of ensuring that the United States did not inadvertently facilitate the commission of human rights abuses in Nigeria and to try and help turn the page on the culture impunity within the Nigerian military before making a final decision to move forward with the sale.

Super Tucano aircraft (photo: DOD)

In the letter we sent to the Obama administration on June 1, 2016 we listed several incidents of human rights violations that indicated a systemic failure to respect human rights and enforce accountability within the Nigerian security forces (see attached). Unfortunately, to date there has been no progress towards investigating any of those past incidents or bringing persons responsible for those abuses to justice. Indeed, in 2017 new concerns have arisen with the January 2017 bombing of a remote displaced persons camp in Rann, close to the border with Cameroon. That action by the Nigerian Air Force killed at least 126 people (and possibly as many as 200), and it demonstrates the urgency of implementing safeguards and monitoring. Although a panel appointed by the Nigerian Air Force to investigate the tragedy presented its report to the Chief of Air Force in April, the report is yet to be made public and speculations about the bombing are rife. The Chief of Air Force has stated that the bombing was a human error. However, witnesses claim that the fighter jet circled the camp before it bombed the camp at least twice.

In view of the continuing patterns of abuse and potential for misuse of US-supplied equipment, and as a first step to accountability, the U.S. Congress should insist that the Nigerian government undertake independent investigation into all allegations of human rights violations by the military. Any such reports on human rights violations by the military in northeast Nigeria should be released, including on the Rann bombing. Further, all victims should receive full reparation, including financial compensation.

As regards the intended transfer of the Tucano aircraft, Congress should ensure that Nigerian military personnel involved in its operation and command will be vetted carefully in full compliance with provisions of the Leahy Law, in order to screen out those responsible for past human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law. Moreover, steps should be taken to ensure that personnel operating the equipment are adequately trained to comply with international human rights and humanitarian standards.

Furthermore, we ask you as Congressional leaders to insist on binding guarantees from the Nigerian government that the equipment will be used in conformity with US and international law. Likewise, Congress should seek guarantees from the Trump Administration that the Department of Defense will effectively monitor the use of these aircraft for compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law.

Just a few weeks ago, Ambassador Nikki Haley made well-publicized comments drawing attention to the connection between widespread human rights violations and the breakdown of peace and security. These comments underscore the risks attached to the intended transfer of the Tucano attack aircraft armed with its mounted machine guns, and the US must take seriously its responsibility to ensure that the transfer of this lethal equipment does not result in a further deterioration of human rights in Nigeria. From your position of leadership in the US Congress, we urge you to convey these concerns to the Administration and seek guarantees that all precautions will be taken.

Development4Security welcomes this guest blog post by Medinat AbdulazeezPhD candidate, International Studies, University of ZurichJunior Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany

As I stepped through the gates, what struck me first was the filth. Heaps of debris overflowing huge metal containers with flies buzzing over tiny fragments. Filth was everywhere. In overfilled dormitories and almost crumbling tents made of crooked tree stumps. In choked pits used as restrooms. In algae-infested water puddles caused by clogged drainages. It seems incomprehensible that people lived in these camps. Inconceivable that people eat and drink in such environment. People sleep on tattered mattresses or simply on worn-out wrappers spread on the sandy floors of the shack-like tents. People ma

Photo by the author, Inside Nigeria’s IDP camps.

ted and got married, people bore children, people raised children in these camps! People lived in these camps – no, people did not live in these camps, they just merely existed.

Children milled around, running, smiling and shrieking. The first and only sign of innocence. Their faces smacked with dry mucus and eye specks. Hair tangled and grey with soothe. Lack of water means daily baths were unaffordable luxuries. So mothers have learnt the ‘wiping method’: using a piece of cloth to wipe essential parts of the body, and the head or hair was not considered essential to this process. International Organizations have promised to come fill the tanks they brought with water. When water comes, the hairs will get a thorough wash.

Women sat largely in groups and chatted. Laughed at each other’s jokes and bantered endlessly. But the hollowness in their voices masked horrors they have witnessed in the hands of Boko Haram. The hollowness disguise scenes of watching loved ones butchered to death, of watching daughters being dragged away to be used as sex slaves by strangers with some crazy idea about building a new and glorious society by destroying the lives of the people around them. Together, these women are bound by their grief. Yet, in their grief, they remember to be different. To steer clear of women who have returned from Boko Haram camps with pregnancies or children. Their common grief does not equate them with women who have been raped and abused by camp officials or security agencies in IDP camps. In their grief, they do not forget to claim ‘purity’. Their grief is not common with the women they refuse to sit and chat with. With the women they gossip about and make fun of. No, in their grief, they remember to uphold stigmatizing traditions that relegate abused women to pitiable positions in the society. Forlorn, the ostracized women huddle together. They laugh gingerly at my jokes. But I know not to ask how they are or how they feel. The answer is obvious in their shallow looks, their sunken gestures. Grief has paralyzed their emotions but being stigmatized by their own kin just crystallizes their anguish. Traditions that do not forgive their kind of victimization were unkind, but unfortunately, traditions are what they are, traditions.

I wonder how camp and government officials sleep at night. Diverting aids and relief materials might seem normal in a country where government salaries do not suffice to pay a family’s monthly bills, but doing this to victims of Boko Haram’s insurgent and terrorist acts surely should feel different. How do they feel when they send trucks of grains meant for IDP camps to markets in other states? Does their skin gristle when they move packs of drugs from camp clinics to their personal dispensaries for sale? Do their hearts thump as they arrange mattresses, blankets and beddings into trucks at night for onward shipment to sell at urban markets? Do their pens tremble when they inflate IDP figures to increase allocations sent to each camp? Do they feel any shame when they invite family and friends into the camps to swell the population when important dignitaries visit? Do they believe their own lies when they announce that the IDPs are well taken care of? Do their chests not feel the weights of their deception? Do their rousing libidos not lull at the sight of the cheerless IDPs they sexually blackmail with relief materials originally meant for them? Is abandoning IDPs who get pregnant from a coercing camp official a part of camp officials’ responsibility to protect?

A sign in the middle of the camp says: National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Authorized IDP Camp. Instantly, I am jolted to realization. The federal government is responsible for the welfare and wellbeing of the displaced persons. Then I wonder, is ‘government’ deaf? Dumb? Blind? Cold-Blooded? But government is made up of the people running it. And if the deplorable situations in these camps have gone on for such a long time without change, then those people are culpable by inaction and wrongdoings. Every child that dies of malnutrition; every woman that endures rape and sexual abuse from camp officials, soldiers or vigilantes in exchange for crumbs to survive or promises of marriage; every father that averts his eyes from seeing his teenage daughter pawn her dignity in the hope of bringing home a kilo of rice for her family; every bomb that goes off in IDP camps because security officials concentrate more on sexual gratification than protecting displaced persons; every woman that loses her sanity due to lack of proper medical care for victims of trauma; every woman that has endured the scorn of bearing the consequences of sexual abuse; every displaced person that has been victimized twice, first by Boko Haram, and now by people in whose hands their well-being has been entrusted; everything that is happening in IDP camps has proven that Boko Haram is not the only evil that needs confrontation.

1990 was a rough year for African economies. Most countries were emerging from a decade of Structural Adjustment programs that cut public spending, and a wave of political liberalization and democratization was beginning to chip away at dictatorships across the continent. 1990 was also a rough year for Donald Trump because his financial empire was 3.4 billion dollars in debt. To give African readers a sense of scale, there were 29 countries with less debt than Donald Trump in 1990. One could argue that Niger, Burundi, and Chad all seemed to be doing a better job managing their money, at least by this measure. The graph below gives us a compelling visual.

African country debt, expressed in 1990 US dollars

Trump dealt with the looming financial catastrophe the way many shrewd American business people do: by not paying taxes. When challenged on this scenario in the presidential debates, he said “That makes me smart.” In 1995 he exploited (or possibly abused, since one of his lawyers called the trick “legally dubious”) a tax loophole to declare an astonishing $916 million loss on his taxes. One way to compare this “private” loss to a public policy failure is look at federal budget deficits as a proxy for seeing which countries were operating at a loss in 1995. A budget deficit is a ratio comparing spending to revenue. By this measure, at least 13 countries, including Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe!!) and war ravaged Algeria were doing better than Donald Trump. The graph below, using data from the World Bank and converting Local Currency Units to 1995 US dollars, illustrates this point nicely. Nine countries had less loss than Donald Trump, and another four (Botswana, Cameroon, Egypt and Lesotho – not shown) apparently ran surpluses.

This was calculated in two steps: (1) deficit in Local Currency Unit = surplus/deficit as % of GDP x GDP in LCU, then (2) deficit in USD = deficit in LCU X (LCU/USD) exchange rate.

Maybe this is unfair. You can’t really compare budget deficits to corporate income, deficits are usually expressed as a share of the economy’s size, and a nation’s debt is different from corporate debt. However, a cornerstone of Trump’s campaign is that his business “success” qualifies him for the presidency. In addition, a mountain of social science research is premised on the idea that democratic politics is analogous to free markets: competition of ideas is similar to competition of goods, and voters are supposedly just like consumers.

It doesn’t really matter where you fall on this analogy. But how you vote next week matters a great deal for both Africa and America. After all, we could end up with a president who is worse at economic management than the dictators who inspired millions of Africans to leave home.

Many thanks to Erin Kelly for her research assistance and to Prof. Assen Assenov for crunching the numbers.

Pastoralists and Global Terrorism

This summer the Global Terrorism Index announced that Nigeria’s “Fulani militants” were the fourth most deadly terrorist organization in the world. The GTI is based on data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. There’s indeed evidence that violence has increased. But it’s hard to pinpoint when and how much, and a goal of this post is to also explore some overlooked reasons as to why.

A shortcoming with the analysis is that according to the Consortium’s dataset, only one attack occurred in 2002 and precisely zeroattacks occurred between 2003 and 2009. In 2010, only three attacks occurred and 2011 again saw precisely zeroattacks. Since the database otherwise goes back to 1970 this makes it difficult to accurately establish the nature of a trend. This is most likely due to the dearth of online newspapers from Nigeria prior to the early 2000s, rather than coding bias. Another problem is that the Fulani, who are traditionally pastoralists, typically clash with those engaged in settled agriculture. Yet “farmers” never appear as perpetrators in Nigeria in the list of 290 incidents between 2002 and 2015. This made it easy for members of the U.S. Congress to seize on the GTI analysis to paint a picture of Islamic extremists senselessly attacking “predominantly” Christian farming communities.

Pastoralists and the Global Economy

My recent road trip through Plateau, Bauchi, Gombe, and Adamawa states with Matthew Page adds important layers of nuance and raises a number of questions ripe for PhD theses research that could clarify latent sources of tension — and help inform a balanced US policy.

(1) Farms regularly violate the boundaries of Federal Grazing Reserves – Cattle herders in Gombe argued that farms often encroach on federal grazing reserves. A visit into the forest about two hours outside of Yola in Adamawa State confirmed this; the grazing reserves are marked by small monuments (pictured below). One cause of this, according to Pastoral Reserve (PARE), is that the government has not maintained the maps for the federally established cattle routes. Moreover, federal officials have supposedly geo-tagged the boundaries but the data have not been made public. This could help defuse tensions between farmers and herders simply by formalizing where planting is permitted and where grazers have the right of way.

For the pastoralists, this also means that staying on route is increasingly difficult. We walked down paths so narrow that it is impossible for even small herds to pass. Some pastoralists in Adamawa allege the farmers do this is on purpose in order to precipitate the inevitable error of animals straying from a narrow path. This then entitles farmers to (modest) financial compensation for trampled crops. It also opens the door to collusion with local police who allegedly inflate the fines imposed on cattle owners in order to take a cut.

Map of Adamawa pastoral routes.

(2) Breakdown in conflict resolution-mechanisms

In 1997, during Nigeria’s military years, the Adamawa state government issued an edict establishing a conflict resolution committee that formally remains on the books. Unfortunately, the state legislature has been mired in corruption and party switching for the last several years, rendering the committee inactive. The committee could generate missing institutional trust as well as institutional memory. Several cattle herders further explained that the lag time between a provocation by farmers and a response can be a year or longer. This makes a pastoralist retaliation appear like a random attack, or perhaps motivated by other causes such as religion. Naturally, this in turn makes it easier for the Global Terrorism Index’s “Fulani militant” label to stick. Organizations such as Chatham House have appropriately called for a “balanced response” that does not “securitize” existing tensions.

Unlike other states in the northeast and the Middle Belt, in Gombe the police have convened community meetings with a broad range of stakeholders that have helped diffuse tensions. According to a pastoralist association we met with there, the government sent detailed information about the grazing boundaries to all the Local Government Areas to help prevent farms from spreading onto federally protected pastures. The government also established ranches where cattle can get water in strategic locations, so it is easier to stay on route. If federalism is an incubator for successful policy experimentation, and the accounts from Gombe are verified, then there may be an opportunity for replication.

(3) Demand for beef is rising

Should we should think about the pastoralists as a wave of Islamic capitalists, responding to a rising demand? The price of beef has gone up (see below) while the lifestyle of those who provide the beef is proving increasingly difficult to sustain. Nigeria has one of the fastest growing populations in the world, and urbanization has been stimulating demand for meat for decades, according to the United Nations. (I also note in my 2014 essay in African Affairs that Abuja, on the edge of the north, is the fastest growing city in West Africa). Food supplies are experiencing added stress now from millions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). This could increase the risks of food shortages, beyond the initial wave that hit the northeast when farmers abandoned their crops, sellers left Maiduguri’s market, and fishermen fled Lake Chad in Boko Haram’s violent wake (and not to mention a collapsing currency).

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of meat from cattle has gone up while key crop prices have remained flat. (No cattle price data available from FAO after 2008. Why?)

(4) Pastoralists are planting crops – Mixed farming, whereby herders settle and sometimes trade commodities such as manure fertilizer for harvested crops, was noted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a phenomenon a decade ago. I met IDPs and Fulani who are now engaged in farming in South Yola. This is important because it indicates a departure from traditional economies and also suggests (based on very limited observation) peaceful co-existence between the “new” farmers and existing ones. This too may prove difficult to sustain over time, as the legal status of these farmers as “strangers” becomes salient in a competition for scarce land.

Research Agenda:

Is there an African start-up that wants to create a smart phone app with geo-tagging that helps the pastoralists avoid straying from their routes? This could help increase livehoods, match supply with demand, and defuse local conflicts. Perhaps organizations such as the Open Government Partnership and Enough is Enough Nigeria can also generate pressure for greater transparency of federal grazing boundaries as another source of data-driven peacebuilding. Publicizing the grazing boundaries would also clarify where farmers can legally plant.

In none of our interviews did pastoralists bring up religion. Even when prompted, cattle herders insisted it was irrelevant to the conflict. What is the contemporary basis for inter-ethnic harmony and intra-ethnic conflict in agrarian communities of the northeast?

What’s the price of cattle? Naturally it varies based on quality, and is influenced by supply and demand. But it also varies based on the location, and herders say close proximity is more important than migrating for a higher price. And how does demand relate to conflict triggers over time? Are the “new” farmers growing mostly for subsistence or for surplus? If you know of any subnational data on cattle prices, please post a comment. And if you know of any funders who would like to support a small collective of college students in Adamawa willing to gather data on these issues, send me an email.

I have just returned from a road trip through Kogi, Plateau, Bauchi, Gombe, and Adamawa states to conduct research for my new book, The Party’s Over: Transition, Terrorism, and Turnover in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. I met with the former Vice President, rural cattle herders, local chiefs, the Emir of Bauchi, bureaucrats, displaced persons, scholars, political party officials and civil society activists. Here are some of my preliminary reactions along with some of the questions posed by my field notes.

Displaced persons from Yobe, who have been living in an informal “host community” in Gombe State for two years. They have never been visited by any government officials.

The millions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the northeast are becoming an institutionalized humanitarian crisis.

Government officials have different interests with regard to the IDPs, and the government and community responses to IDPs vary from state to state. According to a variety of Nigerian government and non-governmental sources, some emergency management officials and local governments see humanitarian assistance (especially foreign aid) as an economic boon that arrived just in time to cushion the shock of the country’s deep recession. By contrast, some state governments, such as Adamawa’s, would like to send the IDPs home. With 270,000 IDPs around the city of Yola alone, according to an enumeration conducted by the American University of Nigeria, we are talking about large numbers of people who could become a drain on state resources and the current local goodwill.

Not only is this a recipe for an ineffective response to one of the world’s greatest humanitarian crises, absent much stronger and more coherent coordination it is also a recipe for corruption. According to one example provided (not yet verified), Borno’s State Emergency Management Agency counts more camps around Maiduguri than the United Nations does; the camps transcend Local Government Area borders so officials see this as an opportunity to inflate aid demands.

The humanitarian crisis outside Maiduguri requires urgent attention, and the assistance within Maiduguri begs for more scrutiny.

Displaced children living in Gombe.

It’s good to see more reporting coming out of Maiduguri, once the center of Boko Haram’s violence in Borno State. But news stories coming out of Dalori and other areas would benefit from shift from human interest to governance. Allegations of wastefulness by donors and corruption by government officials need to be investigated. Much of the humanitarian corruption is also intertwined with military malfeasance. We spoke with the family of a colonel who refused to falsify weapons procurement contracts and was sent to the front lines, where he was shot by Boko Haram. Positive stories about clever innovations and solutions for efficient allocation also need to be highlighted – and verified if they come from official sources. This is difficult to do with the limited access that Nigerian journalists have had to budgets, planning, and much of the northeast.

Any reconstruction plan for the northeast needs transparency and democratic input commensurate with the scale of the spending.

The plan that exists, prepared by the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiatives, has not been widely shared and is stalled within the cabinet, according to sources in Abuja. (Click here to read the executive summary.) Funding and a coherent implementation strategy, with oversight, are essential both for the livelihood of the displaced and to maintain long term harmony in states that hope to send their visitors home someday.

Returning from the fields – ethnic groups that traditionally avoid settled agriculture are planting crops in South Yola.

Those who refuse to return (“I am never going back to Maiduguri,” an old man told me in the forest in South Yola) will eventually face discrimination unless federal citizenship laws concerning indigeneity are resolved. The IDPs who stay – Muslim Fulani who are now planting farms in Adamawa – risk becoming unwelcome “strangers,” with possible comparisons to settler communities in northern Jos that have been conflict flash points.

The legal status of IDPs in host communities is also important because it could potentially lead to a perpetual state of political disenfranchisement. In both Gombe and Adamawa, IDPs said that their vote “did not count” or they were unable to vote through the temporary voter registration mechanism established by the Independent National Electoral Commission. When asked what they wanted to “teach” the government, most said they will not vote again at all. This disillusionment is the first step down a road to deeper feelings and acts of resentment and alienation.

Displaced children and almajiris in Yola. Many analyses argue they provide fertile recruits for Boko Haram, while some studies question that evidence (see Hannah Hoechner 2014).